Busting a HUGE debate myth about Donald Trump

He's *not* going to cancel.

On Monday, I sent out this tweet:

The tweet went viral. It currently has been viewed more than 4 million times. Which is, um, a lot more than my typical tweets get seen.

When you have that many eyeballs on something, you start to notice trends — common themes that just keep coming up.

In this case, one stood out: Lots and lots of Democrats do NOT believe that Donald Trump is going to show up for the first presidential debate next Thursday.

I find this fascinating. Because I am utterly convinced the opposite is true: Trump is going to be at that debate no matter what.

Let me explain my thinking here.

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Trump is utterly convinced that Joe Biden is failing mentally and physically. (Whether or not that is true is besides the point for this discussion.)

He also believes that Biden is being hidden by the campaign as a way to keep his deficiencies from the public eye.

That belief is what’s guided Trump’s push for debates from almost the second it became clear that he was going to walk to the Republican presidential nomination.

“It is important for the Good of our Country, that Joe Biden and I Debate issues that are so vital to American, and the American people,” Trump wrote on Truth Social in early March. “Therefore, I am calling for Debates, ANYTIME, ANYWHERE, ANYPLACE!”

Now. Trump says lots and lots of things that he has no intention of ever doing. And, honestly, I thought debating would be one of them.

After all, in 2022 the Republican National Committee made a very big deal of pulling itself out of the Commission on Presidential Debates, which had run the general election debates for decades.

“The Commission on Presidential Debates is biased and has refused to enact simple and commonsense reforms to help ensure fair debates including hosting debates before voting begins and selecting moderators who have never worked for candidates on the debate stage,” said then Republican National Committee chair Ronna Romney McDaniel.

That move was inspired by Trump who spent much of final months of the 2020 election (and its aftermath) complaining about the moderators and the format of the debates. (Trump and Biden debated twice that year.)

So, it would have been perfectly normal for Trump to stick by that “everything and everybody is rigged” line — and refuse to debate Biden at all.

But, he didn’t do that. He did the opposite. Not only did he talk a big game, he backed it up too. I was STUNNED when Trump not only agreed to debate Biden but did so with CNN as the host.

I spent the entire Trump term working at CNN. And, man, it was ugly. Trump blasted the network nearly every day for allegedly being “fake news” (it wasn’t) and insisted that it was a low-rated failure.

So for Trump to say “yes” to a debate that CNN was hosting, I think, speaks to how badly he wants this to happen.

And, his campaign’s decision to agree to a set of rules — particularly the one in which a candidate’s mic will be muted when it’s not his turn to speak — that clearly favor Biden (see above!) is yet more evidence of just how much Trump wants to stand on a debate stage with Biden.

Of course, Trump is Trump. He is utterly changeable. Which means that, of course, he could decide at the last minute to back out of the debate.

He’s already laid the groundwork for just that sort of move — insisting that both he and Biden should take drug tests before the debate. (Trump has argued, with zero proof, that Biden was on drugs to energize him during his State of the Union speech in the spring.)

But, again, I don’t see a cancellation happening. I think it is FAR more likely that Trump goes ahead with the debate and then insists — if the reviews are less than favorable — that a) Biden was on drugs b) Biden had an earpiece so his aides could feed him answers (a LOT of people on the Trump right think this is going to happen!) and/or c) the moderators and the mainstream media were so biased against him — and were openly helping Biden.

Which reminds me of ANOTHER reason that I think Trump absolutely will go forward with this debate: Because he likes the image of himself as fearless, as willing to fight even with unequal odds.

I can totally imagine him coming out of the debate and declaring something like “Despite the angry and very unfair moderators of failing CNN and the debate rules that were put in place to keep Crooked Joe Biden in the game, I went into the lion’s den and won!.”

Or something like that.

My point is this: I would be stunned if Donald Trump wasn’t on that debate stage next Thursday. He’s been waiting for four years to get the chance to go after Biden in an unscripted way — and he’s not going to give it up for anything.